This second edition of the Rough Guide Book of Playlistscontains more than 500 lists of which 50 are new to this edition. The lists are recommendations of ten songs (sometimes a couple more, sometimes a couple less), covering artists (Rufus Wainwright to Thelonius Monk, Al Green to Manu Chao, Glenn Gould to Julie Andrews), genres (Bebop Classics to Reggae Toasters to Punk Originals to Hot Club jazz), songs (10 best Dylan covers; 8 classic versions of Summertime; 10 love songs that don't cloy), quirks and silliness (Songs about Chickens and Insects; Who let the frogs out?; Big Pizza Pie crooners; Take this Job and Shove it!). There's even a literary edge with playlists like '10 songs raved about in Murakami novels'. Each of the Playlists has a nugget about the song (why you want it on your iPod), and a listings of where it's from (remember CDs?).

The Rough Guide to World Music is the unchallenged work on sounds from around the globe. This third edition is even more comprehensive than ever- updated and expanded including playlists for all countries and new chapters on Bangladesh, Burma, Corsica, French chanson, Malta, Slovenia and New zealand. Volume 2: Europe, Asia and the Pacific has full coverage of genres from Balkan brass to Bollywood song and from fado and flamenco to Filipino fusion. The guide includes articles on more than 60 countries from Albania to Wales and Afghanistan to Vietnam written by expert contributors, focusing on popular and roots music. You'll find discographies for each article, with biographical notes on thousands of musicians and reviews of their best CDs. The Rough Guide to World Music is packed with playlists of the greatest tracks from each country for your iPod and MP3 player.

Includes essays tracing Country's growth from hand-me-down folk to a major American industry; concise biographies; critical album reviews, from the earliest commercial recordings of the 1920s through the mulitplatinum artists of today; and vintage album jackets and previously unpublished photographs.

Compiles career biographies of over 1,200 artists and rock music reviews written by fans covering every phase of rock from R & B through punk and rap.

The Rough Guide to World Musicwas published for the first time in 1994 and became the definitive reference. Six years on, the subject has become too big for one book- hence this new two-volume edition. World Music 2- Latin and North America, Caribbean, India, Asia and Pacifichas full coverage of everything from salsa and merengue to qawwali and gamelan, and biographies of artists from Juan Luis Guerra to The Klezmatics to Nusrat Fateh Ali Khan. Features include more than 80 articles from expert contributors, focusing on the popular and roots music to be seen and heard, both live and on disc, and extensive discographies for each country, with biography-notes on nearly 2000 musicians and reviews of their best available CDs. It includes photos and album cover illustrations which have been gathered from contemporary and archive sources, many of them unique to this book, and directories of World Music labels, specialist stores around the world and on the internet.

The ideal handbook for every rock-n-roll pilgrim, Music USA tours the musical heritage of America, from New York to Seattle, stopping at all the shrines of sound in between. Coverage includes background on the development of local music styles, with details on clubs and venues, radio stations and record stores nationwide.

Cuba is home to some of the world's most vibrant popular music in the world, from son and rumba to salsa and chachacha. The Rough Guide to Cuban Music introduces the full range of Cuba's varied musical traditions and tells the story of their greatest performers, legends like Beny More, Celina Gonzalea alongside more recent stars such as Carlos Varela. Includes features on the origins and development of the various musical genres, a biographical directory of over 100 key artists, with dozens of photographs. Also draws up some critical discographies, recommending the pick of each artist's output.

This expanded and completely revised fifth edition is a unique ebook, spanning a thousand years of music from Gregorian chant via Bach and Beethoven to current leading lights such as Thomas Adès and Kaija Saariaho. There are concise biographical profiles of more than 200 composers and informative summaries of the major compositions in all genres, from chamber works to operatic epics. Topics such as the influence of jazz, notation, conducting, the madrigal, and why Stradivarius made such great violins are covered fully in feature boxes. The Rough Guide to Classical Music in a new ebook (PDF) fromat has been praised for its mix of well-known composers with more obscure, but interesting, figures (like Antoine Brumel and Barbara Strozzi), and for the way it takes contemporary music seriously.

The Rough Guide to Pink Floyd is the ultimate companion to the band that changed the sound and scale of pop music forever. Features include: The Story: from the Syd Barrett era, the Dark Side Of The Moon phenomenon to their transformation into one of the world's biggest bands, The Music: 50 essential Floyd songs and the stories behind them, plus all the albums and recording sessions, side-projects and solo careers, Floyd On Film: the movies and film soundtracks fromThe Wall and More to Zabriskie Point and Pink Floyd at Pompeii, Floydology file: the cover versions, rarities, DVDs, books and websites. From the psychedelic "happenings" of 60s London to the arena gigs, world tours and Live 8 reunion - it's all here.

Taking Irish traditional music as its starting point and focus, this guide traces the music's history, describes its fundamental elements and provides a detailed directory of all the key singers, musicians and bands, listings of venues, festivals, record companies, and instrument makers.